Posted on: November 7, 2023, 12:32h.
Last updated on: November 7, 2023, 12:43h.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are being branded “eco-hypocrites” for reportedly flying to Las Vegas to see Katy Perry perform on Saturday in a private jet owned by an oil heir.
According to Britain’s The Sun, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, both vocal supporters of climate change action, saw the finale of Perry’s “Play” residency at Resorts World last week only because they traveled from Santa Barbara on a Gulfstream co-owned by Michael Herd.
Herd is the president and owner of Herd Producing Company, an oil and natural gas supplier located in Texas.
Princely CO2 Sum
The nonserving royals’ 40-minute flight aboard a plane that reportedly emits two tons of carbon dioxide per hour has stoked outrage from conservative British commentators and social media.
Under the terms of the Paris Agreement, the legally binding international treaty that aims to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, no person’s annual carbon budget should exceed 2.1 tons for an entire year. Both the US and UK have ratified the agreement.
“Saving the planet one Katy Perry concert at a time!” Kevin O’Sullivan tweeted. On his British show, TVTalk, the conservative commentator continued: “What is the matter with these people? They keep telling us to try to save the planet, but it’s very much a do-as-we-say, not-as-we-do, isn’t it?”
In Harry and Meghan’s famous 2021 CBS News interview with Oprah Winfrey, Harry called climate change one of humankind’s “most pressing issues.”
“We need to do better about stopping or allowing the things that are causing so much harm to so many of us at the source, rather than being distracted by the symptom,” he said. “These historic weather events are no longer historic. More and more, they are part of our daily lives, and this crisis will only grow worse.”
Brother Knows Best
Hours after the exiled royals flew to Vegas, Prince William, Harry’s brother and heir to the throne, flew commercial on a British Airways flight to Singapore to collect an environmental award.
Commercial airplanes can produce up to 8.4 tons of carbon dioxide per hour, but spread that cost among 350 or more passengers.
A Gulfstream jet holds 19 passengers max. And, reportedly, the Vegas flight in question held only nine: Harry and Meghan, actresses Gwyneth Paltrow, Zoe Saldana, and Cameron Diaz, Diaz’s husband, Benji Madden, Hollywood producer David Katzenberg, and Herd and his wife, Bumble dating app billionaire Whitney Wolfe Herd.
Royal biographer Angela Levin told The Sun that Harry should “get the sack” from his own charity, Travalyst, which promotes sustainable tourism.
“This sort of behavior is exactly why we call them eco-hypocrites,” she said.
